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The Single UNIX &reg; Specification, Version 2<br>
Copyright &copy; 1997 The Open Group

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<h4><a name = "tag_001_014_2049">&nbsp;</a>NAME</h4><blockquote>
spell - find spelling errors (<b><a href="intro.html#tag_001_003_003">LEGACY</a></b>)
</blockquote><h4><a name = "tag_001_014_2050">&nbsp;</a>SYNOPSIS</h4><blockquote>
<pre><code>

spell <b>[</b>-bvx<b>][</b>+<i>local_file</i><b>][</b><i>file</i>...<b>]</b>
</code>
</pre>
</blockquote><h4><a name = "tag_001_014_2051">&nbsp;</a>DESCRIPTION</h4><blockquote>
The
<i>spell</i>
utility
collects words from the named
files
and looks them up in a spelling list.
A
<i>word</i>
in this context is a series of characters from the set:
<pre>
<code>
[A-Za-z0-9'&amp;.,;?:]
</code>
</pre>
in the POSIX locale, where the first and last characters are alphanumeric.
Words that neither occur among nor are derivable
(by applying certain inflections,
prefixes and suffixes) from words in the spelling list
are written to standard output.
<p>
Within the file, certain character sequences are treated specially;
if the file contains lines that begin with a period
or apostrophe or that contain backslashes in any position,
the results are unspecified.
</blockquote><h4><a name = "tag_001_014_2052">&nbsp;</a>OPTIONS</h4><blockquote>
The
<i>spell</i>
utility supports the <b>XBD</b> specification, <a href="../xbd/utilconv.html#usg"><b>Utility Syntax Guidelines</b>&nbsp;</a> ,
except that the
<i>+local_file</i>
option takes a leading plus sign instead of minus.
The following options are supported:
<p>
<dl compact>

<dt><b>-v</b>
<dd>Write all words not literally in the spelling list.
Plausible derivations from the words in the spelling list
may be indicated.

<dt><b>-b</b>
<dd>Check British spelling.
Besides preferring
<i>centre</i>,
<i>colour</i>,
<i>programme</i>,
<i>speciality</i>,
<i>travelled</i>,
and so on, this option insists upon
<i>-ise</i>
in words like
<i>standardise</i>.

<dt><b>-x</b>
<dd>Write every plausible stem with
"="
for each word.

<dt><i>+local_file</i><dd>
Remove words found in
<i>local_file</i>
from the
<i>spell</i>
command output.
The argument
<i>local_file</i>
is the name of a user-provided file that contains a sorted list of words,
one per line.
With this option, the user can specify a set of words
that are correct spellings (in addition to
<i>spell</i>'s
own spelling list) for each job.

</dl>
<br>
</blockquote><h4><a name = "tag_001_014_2053">&nbsp;</a>OPERANDS</h4><blockquote>
The following operands are supported:
<dl compact>

<dt><i>file</i><dd>A pathname of a text file to check for spelling errors.
If no files are named, words are collected from the standard input.

</dl>
</blockquote><h4><a name = "tag_001_014_2054">&nbsp;</a>STDIN</h4><blockquote>
The standard input is a text file used only if no
<i>file</i>
operands are specified.
</blockquote><h4><a name = "tag_001_014_2055">&nbsp;</a>INPUT FILES</h4><blockquote>
The input files are text files.
</blockquote><h4><a name = "tag_001_014_2056">&nbsp;</a>ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES</h4><blockquote>
The following environment variables may affect the execution of
<i>spell</i>:
<dl compact>

<dt><i>LANG</i><dd>Provide a default value for the internationalisation variables
that are unset or null.
If
<i>LANG</i>
is unset or null, the corresponding value from the
implementation-dependent default locale will be used.
If any of the internationalisation variables contains an invalid setting, the
utility will behave as if none of the variables had been defined.


<dt><i>LC_ALL</i><dd>
If set to a non-empty string value,
override the values of all the other internationalisation variables.

<dt><i>LC_CTYPE</i><dd>
Determine the
locale for the interpretation of sequences of bytes of text data as
characters (for example, single- as opposed to multi-byte characters
in arguments and input files).

<dt><i>LC_MESSAGES</i><dd>
Determine the locale that should be used to affect
the format and contents of diagnostic
messages written to standard error.

<dt><i>NLSPATH</i><dd>
Determine the location of message catalogues
for the processing of
<i>LC_MESSAGES .
</i>
</dl>
</blockquote><h4><a name = "tag_001_014_2057">&nbsp;</a>ASYNCHRONOUS EVENTS</h4><blockquote>
Default.
</blockquote><h4><a name = "tag_001_014_2058">&nbsp;</a>STDOUT</h4><blockquote>
The standard output consists of single misspelled words separated by newlines.
If the
<b>-x</b>
option is used, words can be preceded by
"=".
</blockquote><h4><a name = "tag_001_014_2059">&nbsp;</a>STDERR</h4><blockquote>
Used only for diagnostic messages.
</blockquote><h4><a name = "tag_001_014_2060">&nbsp;</a>OUTPUT FILES</h4><blockquote>
None.
</blockquote><h4><a name = "tag_001_014_2061">&nbsp;</a>EXTENDED DESCRIPTION</h4><blockquote>
None.
</blockquote><h4><a name = "tag_001_014_2062">&nbsp;</a>EXIT STATUS</h4><blockquote>
The following exit values are returned:
<dl compact>

<dt>0<dd>Successful completion.

<dt>&gt;0<dd>An error occurred.

</dl>
</blockquote><h4><a name = "tag_001_014_2063">&nbsp;</a>CONSEQUENCES OF ERRORS</h4><blockquote>
Default.
</blockquote><h4><a name = "tag_001_014_2064">&nbsp;</a>APPLICATION USAGE</h4><blockquote>
None of the internationalisation variables
are required to affect the processing of the input source language.
In the POSIX locale, the
<i>spell</i>
utility recognises English (American or British
dialects, depending on the
<b>-b</b>
option) text.
<p>
The unspecified nature of
<i>spell</i>
when presented files with backslashes or leading periods or leading
apostrophes results from its complex attempts to deal with files
formatted for
<i>troff</i>,
<i>tbl</i>
and
<i>eqn</i>
processing (none of which are specified by this specification).
Constructs such as
.so,
.nx,
.TS,
.EQ,
.ig,
\s
and
\f
are frequently dealt with in a manner that is
most useful for determining spelling errors.
However, such algorithms are historically less
than perfect and are very difficult to describe precisely.
<p>
This utility is marked LEGACY because there is no known
technology that can be used to make it recognise
general language for user-specified input without
providing a complete dictionary along with the input file.
</blockquote><h4><a name = "tag_001_014_2065">&nbsp;</a>EXAMPLES</h4><blockquote>
None.
</blockquote><h4><a name = "tag_001_014_2066">&nbsp;</a>FUTURE DIRECTIONS</h4><blockquote>
None.
</blockquote><h4><a name = "tag_001_014_2067">&nbsp;</a>SEE ALSO</h4><blockquote>
None.
<br>
</blockquote><hr size=2 noshade>
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Copyright &copy; 1997 The Open Group
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